


Forged Birth Certificates and Other Documents

by LegendTrainer



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: (but longer for the kiddos), (not secret for long for the parents), AU, Family, Gen, Secret family, Unethical Experimentation, canon slow roasted at 350 and carved for juicy bits, dash of TFA lore for spice, oof then fluff, or as a recent tf writer stated:, secret royalty, transformers canon is a stack of magazines and i have scissors and glue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:55:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29620950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegendTrainer/pseuds/LegendTrainer
Summary: Perceptor didn't often feel guilt for something that Optimus had ordered him to do, but looking at this code, he felt the coils of it curl around his spinal column.An Aerialbot origins fic.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker (Transformers)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 20





	1. Unsparked Protoforms: Part One (X)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Function](https://archiveofourown.org/works/750206) by [pink_shoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pink_shoes/pseuds/pink_shoes). 



> **Trigger warnings are found in the notes or summary before each chapter.**  
>  Okay! So! First few chappies should be the only ones with any triggery stuff, and I plan on writing them in such a way that they can be skipped past. If the warnings aren’t clear enough for you, feel free to message me and I can give you a general rundown of it if you need it. These first chappies’ll be the basis of all the fluff later on, but not like integral to it. Chapters with triggery stuff I’ll try and remember to put this (X) in the chapter title so people know it has triggery stuff in it.  
> I’m not up for much concrit rn, as this is a really hard time, but plot hypotheses and what-ifs and chatting in the comments are all a-okay.  
> Second-to-last thing is that I don’t plan on going super into the morals and whatever of what goes down in the fic, that’s not my goal. I essentially was gifted nice fluff by my brain, and then it also threw in a nice dose of worldbuilding without my consent and I’m using fic to purge it. I am too tired to deal with alien war and child ownership ethics rn lol.  
> Finally, this fic is inspired by all the delightful Aerialbot fics.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warnings for this chapter:** kidnapping (mentioned), unethical experimentation (mentioned).  
> Optimus' desperation and his frankly pathetic individual ethics have him making bad decisions inspired by Jazz. (He will improve later; Ratchet will see to it.)

Project Defensor’s components had only barely been sparked, awaiting only some final tweaks, when the Enigma of Combination had been reduced to smithereens during a 'Con raid; only glimmering shards remained. The destruction left the Autobots with five sparked and not-yet-onlined combiner components of Project Defensor, and five unsparked protoforms intended for Project Superion. Optimus Prime had hoped to have at least two combiner teams functional when they had first stolen the mercurial artifact, as the Decepticons had already used it to complete two combiner teams of their own.

Truly, Defensor's components were lucky to have even been sparked in the first place. The Well of Allsparks seemed evermore hesitant about sparking protoforms as the war continued, and many bots suspected that it would soon stop entirely.

Although blind to it at first, Optimus quickly grew frantic as the spark harvests grew smaller and smaller, worried that the Well would stop providing sparks before the researchers could replicate the Enigma's powers. While they'd started as soon as they'd realised the artifact was beyond any repair, headway had been slow. He withdrew into his room for cycles, communing with the Matrix so deeply that even his amica, Ratchet, couldn't comprehend the feelings that slipped through their bond. After many shifts had passed, Prime exited his sanctuary with polish faded and only a vision of Sidwswipe and Sunstreaker to show for his desperation. The brothers were immediately called back from their placements near Polyhex.

Ratchet told Optimus that to replicate the combiner technology without the immensely powerful Enigma, they would need to interact with the sparks while they were still malleable and uncoded by their protoforms. They needed to still be partially _in_ the Well. Having heard his amica’s hypothesis, Optimus had his scientists, engineers, and medics all drop their current projects to begin on his new obsession. He began hovering over their shoulders, waiting to see if they could salvage the situation. He drew in resources from all across the board, and in desperation, instructed the twins to spend their shifts at the lab and to submit to testing.

Ratchet told his amica that they already had the twins’ code on file — as every Autobot’s was — and that the brothers were better off being sent on patrol. Optimus disagreed. It wasn’t a medical issue (yet, thought Ratchet, wondering when the poor twins would grow twitchy), so the Prime’s word overruled his. No matter their superior’s thoughts on their ability to solve the problem, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe could only put up with so much fake poking to satisfy the Prime. Yet even when investigations didn't reveal anything new from either their code or sparks, Optimus kept sending them back to the science lab, hoping for some miracle.

"Twins come into being as a single spark, only later splitting," the team kept explaining to the Prime. "The newest combiner has _five_ protoforms. We need five adult sparks from the Well to be joined _after_ being formed.” But none of the logic took the desperation out of Optimus, and so the brothers kept arriving at the start of each cycle. Instead of standing there doing nothing and catching dust, they were quickly employed as lab assistants, which they seemed to enjoy far more than they let on. They cleaned glassware, sorted supplies, and ran standardised tests to keep them out of Prime’s anxiety-inducing gaze, because he still seemed to hope that those two would spontaneously spout some mystical secret. After too long dealing with his hovering, he was banned from the research area.

In the medbay-cum-lab, they were all disappointed when conjunx and amica code both turned up dead ends. They were binary, discrete connections between two mecha. There _could_ be a web of bots all connected by those bonds, but it was just that -- a web -- a clean line from bot to bot. Those bonds therefore wouldn’t work, as prior research had told them that combiners existed neither as discrete mecha, nor as a uniform consciousness. This strange cohesion apparently allowed the formation of the combined form’s distinct personality, yet kept the individuality of its members largely intact. What they seemed to need was the blending characteristics of a twin bond, but with the ability to exist between multiple mecha. Triplets hadn’t ever been reported in medical literature, so no references existed. And as for studying Defensor, he hadn't been onlined since his sparking, and needed some tweaks before onlining again that the researchers just did not have time for with the Well of Allsparks acting up the way it was. They were stuck.

* * *

As per normal for Optimus, the Matrix’s hint had not ended up working in the way that he had expected.

It wasn’t the twins' code that provided the first big clue. The two mentioned the difference between their bond as twins and relationship code at some point late in their shift, after days of dissecting the conjunx code of every bot in the database who had it. They mentioned that a seeker had once said that their description of a twin bond had reminded him of his own trinebond. Sideswipe might as well have lit a fire beneath the afts of the researchers. The team began to titter. Ratchet, despite it being halfway through the nightcycle, had immediately pinged Prowl. He was fed up with his amica’s unhealthy obsession. He wanted it all done and to have the combiner bitlets all awake and healthy.

The all-nighter that had ensued only revealed tantalisingly lacking evidence. Praxians had been separated from Vosnian seekers since early history, and were likely exchanging code with flightless Cybertronians before even then, that meant that while their relationship dynamic code _encouraged_ multiples of three, the need for it was gone. Even then, the snippets of degraded code remaining were still enough to get the team's beleaguered processors inspired. When the entire room turned to Pharma, the doctor reminded them that he was a jet from Tetrahex, and therefore not a true seeker; he was of no more use than Prowl.

Upon being told, Optimus, who had been pacing outside the lab, seemed destroyed. Grumpy, tired of labwork, and halfway through a sizeable carafe of engex, Sideswipe had said, "why don't you just fetch a real seeker, then?"

The science team agreed that they would continue with his thought tomorrow, and quickly turned in for the night after their setback and potential lead. They were too exhausted to see the steely-sure cloudcover in Optimus' optics as he left.

Then, at least, the science team knew exactly where next to look. What they needed was permission from a seeker to take a sampleof their trining and Windbond code, and to rewrite it with the Well of Allsparks in mind. Considering that Optimus had long since volunteered the Matrix as a power source, they felt good. The most hopeful they’d been during the entire project. The entire team recharged soundly that off-shift.

* * *

Upon awaking sometime later, Perceptor began work on the ethics report in earnest. They needed permission forms in triplicate, and the old bases supplied for standard coding experiments were woefully insufficient. The rest of the team piled on as they slowly awoke, having Pharma and the twins review the drafts so that they could supply their bond experience as much as possible. Ultra Magnus and Prowl soon joined them.

As for Optimus, he had not been seen the entire day. Neither had Jazz.

Ratchet was suspicious.

Snippet of comm. discussion between the amicae Ratchet and Optimus Prime:

13:05 Ratchet: Orion where the thunderin’ Primus are you? We need this ethics consultation done ASAP, and you’d be a damned big help _if you were here._  
13:08 Orion Pax: Don’t worry about that.  
13:08 Orion Pax: Busy right now.  
13:11 Orion Pax: Unrelated, but do you have room for some supplies in the medbay?  
13:11 Orion Pax: Only temporary. Something the size of a large storage crate, maybe.  
13:19 Ratchet: Pax, don’t you dare start thinking of this medbay as extra storage space for your datapad collection. You know we’re pressed for space most times as it is.  
13:20 Ratchet: I just checked; we _may_ have a temporary space where Wheeljack and Brainstorm fried part of the server last centivorn. _If_ you get your ass unbuisied ASAP and get down here. We’re thinking might be able to ask some of the more reasonable Vosnian councilors to donate their code during tomorrow's meeting.  
13:21 Orion Pax: I wouldn’t dare. And thank you.

Ratchet’s suspicions proved to be grounded, as the next night Perceptor and Pharma, sleeping on cots in the medbay, were awoken by muffled sounds of fury.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I try to use pinged, I read it in my head as pung.


	2. Unsparked Protoforms: Part Two (X)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warnings for this chapter:** Unethical experimentation, kidnapping, non-con code downloading (not sexual).
> 
> Jazz and Optimus "solve" the research team's main dilemma without consulting them.

Optimus had wanted the team to have the highest chances of success, and when Jazz had said that those with the strongest connections to the windbond were royals, it hadn't taken long for them to scope out some possible targets.

The others would have told them that the royals would never let them at their precious code, so they shouldnt even bother asking and go find some random politician to ask. Optimus had promptly ignored them, and he and Jazz had simply gone off and got one. Specifically, the heir to the Vosnian throne, Winglord-in-waiting Starscream. That particular royal was well known for both his mercurial temper, and for skipping his guard retinue to go drinking in seedy local oil houses with his trine. The latter tidbit had taken all of ten minutes to figure it out. Jazz had been sitting in the favourite oilhouse of the Senate's employees when two trines of grumbling seekers had shuffled in and filled up the bar. The emblem of the Vosnian Royal Guard had been embossed onto their wings.

After that, it hadn't been hard for Jazz to overhear their many complaints concerning the Winglord-to-be from his exhausted guard detail. They'd said all he had needed to hear. The heir had been snatched and the oil of the other two trinemembers had been very lightly drugged so that they would be recharging for the expected length of time in their motel room.

The only problem had been that he might have been _too_ highly ranked, meaning his absence might be noted, and, if they were caught, the reaction would be far more severe.

Jazz thought heir apparent Starscream was worth the risk.

As the two Autobot reasearchers saw him in that absurdly early morning, he was understandably spitting mad inside his cage, wings rattling and talons swiping at anyone who got within range. He was a tricolour tetrajet with a charcoal-dark face that was all high, high cheekbones and an angular alquiline nose. His lips were thin, rouged, and pressed in a hissing grimace, and above them his angular optiks were likewise detailed with paint. A blinking inhibitor on his back between his wings, unreachable, was plugged directly into his neural net. It was likely the only reason anyone in the near vicinity could hear anything; it had disabled his antigravs, thrusters, and voice.

The two medical bots sat there, stunned, as Optimus and several Special Operations members took stock of their prisoner's containment, seemingly uncaring that the seeker himself was so furious that his biolights pulsed like a police cruiser and he was rattling like a loose muffler on a dirt roat. Once they'd all confirmed that everything was to their standards, two of the four bots went and stood guard at the medbay's entrance. Optimus and Jazz remained by the cage. 

"I'm not happy we had to do this," Optimus said. "I beleive it was necessary, however."

He turned to Pharma and Perceptor and continued.

"I do hope you both understand that none of what has occurred with our temporary guest can spread outside this medbay. I will let Jazz take it from here." 

The Spec Ops head slipped from behind the cage, neatly dodging the seeker's swipe to stand before Pharma and Perceptor. He tipped his head, visor indicating that he was working in his HUD, and then the cage let loose a controlled burst of EMP, and Starscream clattered to its padded floor. The medic and scientist were rattled, staring at the caged flier. Jazz slipped into a casual lean on the edge of the cage, and began to explain the plan.

"First of all, ye'll be using this lovely royal here to grab yer source code, I'll be aiding ye in copying it. It'll be all read and no write, so no changes to his source code, obviously, that ain't what he's here for.

"Once we've got the code in a sandbox on a computer not connected to the base's networks, we'll be doing two sanitising stages. First, checking it for any bugs or trojans or what-have-ye that's he's got hidden in there. Fellow has a science degree from Iacon U, he's no slouch. Then, we'll be doing a second stage of sanitising. We'll be cleaning the code of any specific reference of exactly who it’s from, just leave the necessities intact. Personal identifiers have got to go. Got that?"

Both bots nodded numbly.

"Now. I probably don't have to say this, but Starscream's involvement in this and the situation surrounding it do _not_ leave this room. He'll have his memory wiped as best we can, and we didn't want any traces of sedative in his lines, which is why the prince was awake when he was brought here. Only had time to calibrate the EMP generator just then. We don’t want more civil war participants than we already have. Cybertron’s in deep enough.

“So ye don't tell the rest of the research team, and ye don't tell the new combiner bitties. Got that too?" 

"Yes, sir."

Optimus waived Perceptor, who looked ill, over to the side with him. He placed his massive hand down on the microscope's shoulder, rocking the comparatively tiny frame and nearly engulfing the bot’s neck. The Prime leaned in close and began murmuring to Perceptor, who nodded occasionally in response. Pharma and Jazz stood off to the side, watching.

“Now, I know you don't have any reservations about doing shady slag, Pharma. I've seen your resumé. This is the chance of a lifetime. Bots with this code aren't available every day for your perusal. We knew we needed a royal, it just so happened that the one with a disregard for his own security is one of the one's with the best code, yeah? You know that I know my way around a bot’s code, so I’ll be checking him after for any changes. You hurt him in any way, I’ll have the Pit sent in on your helm. We clear?”

Pharma didn’t look at the bot, staring straight ahead.

“Crystal, sir.”

“Good, let’s keep it that way. If either of you has any questions, toss ‘em my way. We all want this done clean, clear, and ASAP, especially him, I’d assume. Seemed like a self absorbed pompous sack of connectors, but he has the processor and skills to back it up.”

When Optimus and Perceptor rejoined them, Jazz clapped his hands together, brightening up with his trademark false cheer.

"Okay! So! All the other bots on the combiner research team will get a notification to work on awakening the Superion components when they themselves wake up in the morning. Supposedly so that they can talk to them and get an idea of what the bond feels like for reference, ye thought it might lead to better code yadda yadda, we'll deal with the cover story after. What that means is that between me, ye, and the two agents watching the door, we've got to get this done tomorrow morning -- that is not the upcoming morning, the one after that, just t'specify.

“So, sound good? Pax'll make the fuel for us while we set up."

Without waiting for anyone to actually agree, both commanding bots turned around and went about their work. Optimus trod over to the secondary medbay’s break room to work on charged fuel for the lot of them, stopping by the door to get the preferences of the two Spec Ops bots still stationed there. Jazz returned to the cage, reaching in and plugging the seeker into a separate box, which hummed to life, and then lined the box into his own arm. The box was compact, unlabeled, and a uniform matte black, only adding an indistinct whirr to the general hum of the smaller medbay. Obviously some in-house Spec Ops gear. The kind that Ratchet would rather see in pieces than in a medical space. 

Pharma squirmed and Perceptor twitched, both looking ill for vastly different reasons.

The medic went and grabbed a small parts crate, and gently set it down behind Jazz so the bot wouldn’t have to stay quat down next to their “patient”. Perceptor knew frightened pandering when he saw it, and this was it just as much as scared undergrads serving their overseeing professor before the universities had shut down was.

The microscope shifted uneasily, then slipped over to the ancillary medbay computer. He was met there by an indistinct Spec Ops bot who gently barred him access, putting his servo out in front and shaking his helm. He indicated for the science bot to step back. He first began splicing each connection line that went into the computer into another Delphic bit of tech gear, then unplugged each line from the main computer, coiling it neatly on the floor. The bot plucked more cables from his subspace, and plugged in the exact number of original connection cables first to the ambiguous box, then to the main computer. The box added another gentle hum to the normal sursurration of a medbay with no patients. 

None of this comforted Perceptor, who knew nothing about the politics of kidnapping an heir, but who knew enough about inter- and intranets to know that, as the bot spliced a generator into the computer’s power supply, he was watching a very serious cover-up take place. He figured Optimus, who was once Orion Pax — rising star of archivism, had probably given them free access to the medical archives without any tracking, and that the unassuming box between the computer and its connections had something to do with it. The muted matte grey generator would hide any extra power demands the computer had over its baseline while editing mass amounts of archaic, convoluted code.

Perceptor had seen his fair share of government officials asking him to do shady things, and not once had he acquiesced. Had it not been for Optimus, a bot whose treatise on the organisation of large archival systems he had immediately forwarded to every database he knew of, who he now looked up to, giving him reassurances just then, the microscope would _never_ have touched this project. Would’ve reported it to... who exactly?

He worried at the paint on his digits in silence as the other bot finished up his work, and he was granted access to the computer. Perceptor booted her up, and watched in confusion as he accessed databases while his uploaded data remained almost nil. Even those few bytes, he was sure, were nullified by that box and Optimus’ fiddling.

Perceptor set up the CNA coding program alongside some plugins that integrated compatible personality matrix hardware simulation as Optimus trotted out with some fuel.

His hands felt gritty even though he knew they were clean. Paint flakes fluttered from his digit-tips and he wrung his hands in silence. Optimus served Jazz and the two other Spec Ops agents before walking over to the computer with Perceptor. He again placed his hand on the microscope's shoulder, rocking him so much that Perceptor had to shift his stance so as to not topple over. The Prime began rubbing along his spinal column with his thumb in what the scientist assumed was _supposed_ to be a comforting gesture. The scientist was not much comforted.

"Thank you, Perceptor. You know that I want to meet these bitlets and have them as healthy as they can be, probably almost as much as you do. It could not be done without you."

With a last press of his hand, the convoy returned to the kitchen. 

Perceptor began to work.

* * *

Perceptor didn't often feel guilt for something Optimus told him to do, but looking at this code, he felt the coils of it curl around his spinal column. He had already edited out the hallmarks of the future Winglord of Vos as much as he could, the smoking gun of guilt. However, there was only so much one could do when the power of that code was what you needed.

The Spec Ops team had just left after his confirmation that both parts of the code were ready -- the trine bond for its ability to connect multiple bots closely, and the royal Windbond code to allow for that plurality that they absolutely needed.

The scientist's main source of anxiety, the royal himself, had been carried down to the Ops' belowground den of operations to have his memory wiped of the incident and deposited back into a seedy motel where his trinemates were staying. Perceptor wasn't sorry to see him go, he should never have been here, they should've just tried their luck with asking for volunteers--

"Hey, Perceptor?" said Pharma.

"Yes?"

"Do you think they'll online properly? We cleaned that seeker's code but it was the mess of a paranoid bot. We got it all?"

"Righty paranoid, perhaps. And, yes, I beleive so."

Perceptor turned aroung, looking where Pharma was facing. There lay the five bodies that would form the combiner, protoforms with basic grounder frames and internal layouts, but still just some solids submerged in the multi-state sentico metallico nestled in their stasis pods.

This late in the war, with the Well producing fewer sparks, hotspots fading, and the energon lines of the very planet itself drying up, they'd been lucky to get what little living metal they had. Project Defensor had needed more than anticipated, the combined form needing kibble and therefore drawing extra from their limited reserves meant that Superion's component bots would not be formed in their adult frames. They'd be without alt-mode, without the reasoning of a fully formed processor. They'd form as bitlets, and Perceptor felt terrified for them.

He watched over their little frames as he finished off a cube of now-stale energon, hoping they'd be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love replying to comments! I'm in rural nowhere on an island that is also nowhere so there's no one around to even meet in a park and chat to from ten feet away. Feel free to chat to me in the comments, I'm like an animal that needs their enrichment XD  
> Also, did you know hard science students get no ethics training? we dont, unlike doctors. just kinda weird.

**Author's Note:**

> me: *tries to get in the shower in peace*  
> muse: *gives me floof with Screamer and some baby autobots *  
> me: awwwwwwww  
> me: *lets my guard down*  
> muse: *takes this the rest of this plot bunny and hits me over the head with it*


End file.
